Via Brett at Harry’s Place, a woman called ‘shirley’ comments on this slightly bonkers story about a council which has banned the phrase ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ because it somehow offends us atheists. Naturally, she takes it as an affront to the British way of life, and is in no doubt about who’s to blame:

shirley rose,
goole 10/11/2008 08:53:39
councils are reaslly getting more and more stupid – this is an old english saying and it is stupid to ban it. The foreigners should realise they came here willingly, they were not forced to come and by the same reasoning if they dont like it they either accept it or return back to where they come from It is time now for all councils to stand together and honour the english way and the traditions. Thankfully my local town council are still having christmas lights.

At which point the foreigners in the audience are entitled to turn around and ask ‘huh, what did I do?!’ Just a minute later shirley realises she’s blaming the wrong scapegoat but… well… je ne regrette rien springs to mind.

shirley rose,
goole 10/11/2008 08:54:47
I appear to have become mixed up with atheists and foreigners, but the sentiments are still the same.

Sheffield is apparently home to one of the most vibrant swingers scenes in the country:

It’s Friday night in Sheffield and, at the old Robin Hood pub, the conversation is growing lively. “It would be a fantastic experience to see you strip off and see you two play with each other. Then I would join and play with my wife if she lets me,” says Simon, a chubby, middle-aged Yorkshireman with a cheeky grin. His wife Toni, who is slim and curly-haired and looks a decade younger than him, gives me a reassuring smile as I nearly drop my notepad on the floor.

“Don’t worry love, he’s only joking,” she says with a laugh as I try to focus on the blank page instead of the various semi-naked people who are casually walking around nearby.

The Robin Hood is no ordinary pub. Once a watering hole for local steelworkers, it went through a radical makeover nearly a decade ago. The dartboards were replaced with large TVs showing hardcore porn, the pool table made way for pole dancing poles, an S&M dungeon was added, and the Robin Hood acquired an alternative identity as “La Chambre”, one of Britain’s most successful swingers’ club.

If you’re in a small-fry rap group with ambitions of becoming an overnight MySpace sensation, recording a song called ‘Kill Bill O’Reilly’ would be a pretty smart career move. Of course, this fact seems to have completely escaped the hounds of the hard-right who’re busy hyperventillating about ‘death threats from liberals’ and inadvertently generating even more hype and Google hits for their new found nemesis than they might otherwise have had. As a song, it ain’t all that bad; the beats are bit dull, but at least the string samples add the kind of melodrama you’re going to need if you’re threatening to kill someone. Lyrically, it’s an indictment of Billo’s bullying and hypocrisy which isn’t too far removed from the truth (juxtaposing his opposition to gay marriage for ‘undermining the family’ with the Andrea Mackris scandal was a nice touch), though I obviously wouldn’t endorse their rather bloody conclusion. But even the death threat’s a little tame by comparison; I suspect from some of the ‘shocked!’ and ‘appalled!’ reactions that none of these people have ever heard Notorious BIG (key quote: “I like to spread the blood like mustard”).

In the blogosphere, this is one of those ‘stories’ that generates an amount of interest, invective & flame-throwing that tends to be wildly disproportionate to its importance, and only serves to give further credence to the theory that political blogging is just another outlet from someone’s pent-up frustration. In that regard, the conservative blog commenter and the upstart hip hop act have more in common than they might think.

No values voters have trouble getting excited about the candidates for President. I actually heard a rumour that Bob Barr eats kittens, but if having a President with no values mattered so much to them, they should’ve supported Dick Cheney when they had the chance…

To be honest, all this song shares with the 4th July is the title. But I wanted to post it because it was through art, above all else, that I managed to shed my lobotomised, Michael Moore-adoring anti-American adolescence. Sure, America’s the birthplace of Nixon, both Bushes, Kissinger and Reagan, but it’s also the birthplace of Mark Twain, Joan Didion, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Aretha Franklin and Elliott Smith.